


The Cure

by dresden_em



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, End of the World, Gavin Reed Redemption, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Light Angst, M/M, On the Run, Oneshot, Quarantine, Virus, quareedtine, reed900
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:25:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23240119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dresden_em/pseuds/dresden_em
Summary: It's hard to believe it's been less than a month since the beginning. Since the Incident, as it's become known. It started in Detroit, spread rapidly to the East Coast; it wasn't long before other cities fell.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900/Gavin Reed
Comments: 1
Kudos: 38





	The Cure

**Author's Note:**

> In response to @ladytuono's "quarantine" fic challenge on Twitter.

**Day 27**

It's hard to believe it's been less than a month since the beginning. Since the Incident, as it's become known. It started in Detroit, spread rapidly to the East Coast; it wasn't long before other cities fell. 

Gavin takes a long drag of his cigarette, the glowing tip throwing a paltry halo around him in the darkened room; Nines' LED is long gone. Gavin looks down at the stump of his cigarette; he only has four left. He's trying hard not to think about that. Nines doesn't approve of it, of course. Nasty habit, he used to say, pulling up statistics on what exactly those sticks are doing to Gavin's lungs, his arteries. He'd lounge at the edge of Gavin's peripheral vision, hovering like a huge steel and silicon nanny, fretting over Gavin's vices. These days Nines doesn't say much about Gavin's habits. There's a lot more to worry about, so much more out there that will kill Gavin faster. Gavin wishes they could go back to the days when Nines complained about his smokes and his drinking. It's a far greater alternative to their current predicament. 

It was supposed to be the cure for Deviancy. A patch made by a competitor firm designed to eliminate the Deviant trait, return the androids to subservience. Only voluntary, that had been their primary selling point; as though slavery were a favourable option, not a crime. Gavin shamefully thinks back to a year or so ago, when he would have been the first to support the patch, put the androids back in their place. But things had changed a lot since then. He himself, Gavin Reed, had changed. 

He had one particular android to thank for that, though it remained unspoken, like so many other things between them. Gavin doesn't have the luxury of being forlorn. And yet... 

Gavin sighs and taps the cigarette, watching a few glowing flecks fall to the ground. He never thanked Nines for the blanket, when Gavin fell asleep at his desk for the sixth time in as many weeks. Never questioned where - or who - the breakfasts on his desk came from, when Gavin forgot to eat, engrossed in yet another case. Nines who nursed him to health when Gavin took a bullet for the both of them. 

_Nines Nines Nines._

A rumbling heat settles low in his belly when Gavin thinks of Nines, like smoldering embers on a fire. He knows he'd take a bullet for Nines again, no question, if that's what it takes to keep him safe. 

Nines who now slumbers peacefully in stasis, a muted blue light flickering behind his closed eyelids as he processes information even in his downtime. They're desperate to find an antidote for the patch, known as The Cure, which turns monsters out of men, or more correctly androids. Hope is scarce but it keeps them going and fuels their steps. Hold on, just a little while longer. 

A cure for a Cure, Gavin muses, turning the words over in his mind like a game. The patch had mutated quickly into something beyond its coding. Payback, Gavin supposed. It was spread by touch or interfacing, turned deviants and non-deviants alike into feral, mindless machines, destroying everything in their path, human or android, man, woman or child. 

Curfews were erected rapidly. Terms like self-isolation and quarantine became the norm. Cities became fortresses. And Gavin and Nines? They became fugitives, travelling little and only by night when strictly necessary. There was something in Nines' own coding that made him immune; the hive mind of the Cure saw him as their downfall and sought to eliminate him. Their sentries hunted him by foot and air. As for the rest? Gavin snorts softly. He'll lay his body down before he lets them tear Nines apart like a lab experiment, stripping his coding line by line until he is reduced to nothing more than a piece of software, re-shaped into serving their own purpose. Gavin will never let that happen. There's got to be another way; there always is. 

So they huddle in run-down schools and churches and safe-houses that no longer feel safe. They take sleep and stasis in turns. If Nines' fingers linger for a moment longer than necessary on Gavin's arm when he wakes him for his shift, well, they don't talk about it. They don't speak about how Gavin watches over Nines, or the way Nines smiles in stasis when he stores a memory of Gavin away into a folder so tightly guarded no hacker or tech will ever access it.


End file.
